Draft legislation that came before parliament yesterday will formalise the abdication of Juan Carlos and pave the way for Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe to become the monarch. It is set to be rubber stamped by both major parties, despite calls from the streets that the people should decide.

The Socialist Workers Party is so keen on turning its back on its republican roots that it is reportedly forcing its members of parliament to be called to the stand and say their vote out loud.

If they vote against the draft bill on Spain’s first royal democratic succession — approved in an emergency cabinet meeting last Tuesday — the party will fine them between €200 and €600.

Three socialist MPs — Odón Elorza, Federico Buyolo and Guillem Cargía Gasulla — have already voiced their disapproval of the stance adopted by leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, who announced he will stand down as party secretary after his party’s lacklustre 23 per cent showing at the European elections last month.

Left-wing Izquierda Unida (United Left) led mass demonstrations in Madrid and across the country over the weekend — the second wave of demonstrations against the monarchy since the king announced his abdication — and said it won’t support the bill. The ruling Catalan nationalist coalition Convergence and Union (CiU) and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) say they will abstain.

Both the communists, who lead Izquierda Unida, and the socialists backed King Juan Carlos for his role in the transition to democracy and in particular his decisive intervention in favour of a nascent Spanish democracy when it was threatened by a coup in 1981 that wanted to hand him absolute power.

But of late the shine has come off the monarch, who was personally appointed by dictator Franco before he died in 1975.

His anointed successor, Prince Felipe, due to be crowned June 19, is apparently clean as a whistle and respected, like Juan Carlos once was, for his common touch.

He’s married to a “commoner” and has taken care to be photographed taking his daughters to school or to the local cinema.

Adding to his woes, Juan Carlos was revealed to have gone on an elephant-hunting trip to Botswana—a junket paid for by a Saudi lobbyist—with a woman (a German aristocrat) who was not his wife, Queen Sofia. That didn’t go down well with the church or the six million unemployed, let alone animal lovers.

But calls for a vote on the monarchy run rather deeper than the behaviour of the Spanish royals — direct descendents of the ancien regime Bourbons who ruled France before and after the 1789 revolution — and confront the very fact of having a monarch as a head of state in the 21st century.

Popular anger with the regime gave rise to the indignados movement that occupied plazas in the capital across the country in May 2011, and last month’s surprise 8 per cent support for the new radical Podemos (We Can) party, coupled with a significant increase in the vote for Izquierda Unida.

Adding to the sense of a political system out of touch with its people is the opposition of both main parties to an independence vote in Catalonia.

Some republicans and radicals argue that the monarchy — as the guiding force behind a much-trumpeted “model transition from dictatorship” — has actually held Spain back compared to other European countries, by maintaining intact the Franco-era power structures comprising the banks, large construction firms, the church and the right-wing media. This has led, they argue, to lower social spending, a high degree of corruption and the domination of conservative ideas.

The calls for a republic, then, are part of a wider demand for a freer, more democratic, more egalitarian society and a more advanced, less centralising and controlling state. In short, a Spain at the service of people, not corporate interests.

Although polls also show the majority wouldn’t back a republic if asked, Spain’s ruling class doesn’t want to take any chances.

Under the republic of the 1930s, the working class got ideas above its station and Generalissimo Franco’s black shirts were deployed, assisted by Herr Hitler and Mussolini, while the English and French democracies stood by and watched the carnage.

Conservative PM Mariano Rajoy and his cheerleaders in the conservative press are enjoying the whole affair, rich with opportunities to pit the socialists against their increasingly powerful left-wing rivals.

Indeed this issue risks being one more nail in the coffin of the socialists which — having pursued neoliberal austerity policies that hit their core supporters hardest — were defeated roundly at the hands of the Popular Party in general elections in November 2011 and, having failed to draw the political lessons, have seen their fortunes go from bad to worse since.

But it should be noted that between them the two parties that have ruled the roost over the past 35 years since Spanish democracy was restored fell short of 50 per cent of the vote in the European elections.

So as things stand today they cannot pretend to represent the majority. Denying the people the chance to decide whether they want a monarch could yet backfire on both of them.